The Frustration of Mobility and Reach

Wednesday, October 28, 2009 by Sean Conry
In my last post, I wondered about device market share and it's affect on our ability to reach the right people for survey conducting.

I focused on the manufacturer / operating system, but another element also has a significant affect on reach. I guess you could call it Mode. We normally talk about mode in terms of whether we're collecting data over the web, over the phone, face-to-face, etc. Mobile is it's own mode, but there are choices within that mode.  

Specifically, the primary mobile mode possibilities for a mobile survey system are text message, mobile web, and applications.

Check out this interview/podcast from a recent interview at a CASRO event. Heidi Dickert has some good points about how a different type of technology is required when looking at mobile surveys. The message? You can't just replicate the same old approach when it comes to mobile research.





Text messages give you ubiquitous reach, but the commonly held experience among those I speak with is that SMS surveys are good only for very, very quick polls. The burden on the respondent is high, and you can only squeeze in 3-4 questions before participation drops off - and if you haven't seen it yourself, believe me, it doesn't just stumble off the curb, it careens off the grand canyon.

Mobile web feels like it should be familiar since CAWI has taken over as the primary mode of choice in so many countries. However, the problem is that the mobile web isn't great yet for the vast majority of users. You still need a lot of patience. Think about a news page that requires 10 seconds to load, but then you spend 5 minutes reading. That's much more palatable when compared to refreshing screen after screen after screen of a mobile web survey. To reinforce this, check out Mobile Marketer's recent article about slow load time is the #1 performance issue on the mobile web.

Off course we believe in Applications (particularly Java where possible, native where needed). With iPhone App store just reaching it's 2 Billionth download in September, and Facebook's install base leaping from 2 million to 10.5 million in two months with the release of targeted Java versions, the path seems pretty clear to us...
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The latest on mobile market share - coverage & reach

Monday, October 19, 2009 by Sean Conry
The two main considerations in picking a mobile research methodology are capability (what kind of work am I enabled to do?) and coverage (who can I reach with that capability?). Those of us in research care so much about market share of mobile devices because it profoundly affects both elements.

We need to reach people. But it's not just any people we need - we need to reach the right people. A colleague of mine recently held a focus group and noted - "hey - there are an awful lot of artists and musicians in this group..." Did his recruiter get the mix of participants right? Maybe, but probably not (you'd think so too, if I told you the category ).

To a marketer, the more people you can reach, the more mindshare you can gain with your ads to promote revenue growth. Marketers talk about how to reach a target market with their message because they need to know they are spending their money wisely.  However, the reason researchers care about the number of people who see our "message" (say, a survey invitation), is because of our sampling frame. We need the right people to provide us with feedback in order to help solve the business problem at hand.

In short, researchers have to worry about it even more because the science of our analytics depends on it. Without reach, my colleague wouldn't even have had artists and musicians to talk to. 

So, it's very interesting to see what Gartner is predicting for the future of Mobile OS market share. They say Android will overtake Research In Motion’s BlackBerry OS, the iPhone OS and Windows Mobile to capture 14.5% of the smartphone market within three years.

"Symbian’s market share will fall from around half of the global market to just 39%, according to Gartner. Apple will maintain its third place and Windows Mobile will stay in fourth. However, RIM’s BlackBerry OS will fall from second place to fifth,"

If you're thinking about partnering with a survey system supplier to provide cellphone survey capabilities, then make sure they have an expertise and plan in place to meet all of the different flavours of these platforms as they explode in the next two years, otherwise you may never overcome the problem of reach.
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A sum of parts: a quick review of what we've added since Entryware 6.0

Thursday, July 9, 2009 by Mark Cameron
Today marks the release of our latest mobile survey system, Entryware 6.4. While it carries the numbering of an "incremental" upgrade, it is a significant milestone in terms of the new capabilities that it provides.  We chose to release it as v6.4 to focus on increasing capabilities rather than going through the onerous task of re-labelling this as a "major" release, but the impact is indeed major!

Entryware 6.4 brings diary research, including the rich photo diary capabilities enjoyed by some of our key customers on Palm devices today, to Windows Mobile users.  It also provides some significant improvements to the look-and-feel of Entryware on both Palm and Windows Mobile devices, which improves usability for both face-to-face interviewing and self-completed surveys.

For those who are in the field every day working on a handheld device, using the 5-way navigator to page through long questions or proceed to the next question can significantly improve efficiency. And for those respondents who are just being introduced to mobile survey technology, automation to auto-start projects eliminates unnecessary steps  for the user while providing added security for project managers.

I took a look at our release notes today and realized that since our last "major" upgrade, Entryware 6.0, we have added a number of key features in the various v6.x upgrades we have posted:
  • Sliding scale questions
  • Photo capture on Palm OS, Windows and Windows Mobile
  • Encrypted and compressed data transfer
  • SPSS v13+ export
  • Improved user-selectable missing
  • Ability to launch external Windows Mobile applications
  • Improved CSS formatting on Entryware Mobile for Windows
  • Improved string handling in scripting
  • Additional African language support
  • Support for Palm Pre devices
  • 5-way navigation
  • Improved searching capabilities in Data View Report
  • Project automation to auto-start questionnaires
  • Improved graphics quality including hi-res Windows Mobile screens
  • Diary survey engine for Windows Mobile
  • Printing capability for Bluetooth printers
  • Ability to convert Multiple Response questions to a series of Single Response questions
  • Various other small enhancements
And that doesn't even touch on everything that was new in v6.0... this is just what has happened since then.

I thought is was worth sharing all of the key v6.x enhancements in one combined list, because many people are unaware of everything that can be done using Entryware today.  We find that many of our clients are still happily using older versions of the software, which is great to hear... but in some cases significant efficiency gains could be made by adopting the latest and greatest.
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Entryware on Palm Pre: mobile surveys never looked so sexy!

Thursday, April 2, 2009 by Mark Cameron

In January, Palm took the world by storm by announcing both its new webOS and the Pre smartphone, which have been touted by many as setting a new bar for mobile phone functionality. Planned for release sometime this quarter, the Pre has leapfrogged Palm from a once-prized but aging provider of PDAs and smartphones, to an innovative leader with the coolest mobile device to hit the market since the iPhone. With a new team of superstars at the helm (many of whom came from Apple), Palm's recent announcements have impressed techies and investors alike.

But the question we have all been asking for the past couple of months is... what is the future of Palm OS applications like Entryware?

Today we heard the news we've been waiting for... that Palm OS applications will be supported on Pre devices. We had reason to believe that some form of Palm OS support would be available on webOS devices, but we've been in a bit of a holding pattern awaiting confirmation.

Palm devices have always been ideal for survey research, because Palm OS offers a simple, elegant interface that is consistent and easy to use.  Although Entryware software also runs very well on Windows devices, as long-time Palm fans we are thrilled to see that a whole new generation of Palm devices will continue to be turned into best-of-breed wireless survey systems.

Techneos is committed to ensuring customers a smooth transition from existing Palm devices to the next generation of webOS phones. In the meantime, existing Palm devices like the Centro, Treo and TX -- all of which are excellent tools for mobile research applications like face-to-face interviews, diary studies and mystery shopping -- should be available at bargain prices while Palm makes room for new inventory.

Good going Palm! We knew you had it in you...


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